PDM…Do We Need It?

To begin I want to use the disclaimer that I have never used PDMWorks Enterprise and I have dabbled with PDMWorks Workgroup every now and then but have never officially set anything up. So I ask myself the question…Do we really need it to be efficient in our daily activities or is it just going to add more work for the designers when they are working on a project?

During the “What’s New In 2009″ presentation at the SolidWorks 2009 Press Launch Event in Barcelona, Spain I began to notice some cool functionality that really caught my eye. Mark Schneider and Neil Cooke were working side by side on models during the presentation showing some of the new functionality and while they were swapping files and updating each other’s files I kept noticing this pop up box that would appear telling them what had changed in the model among other information. Now that we have moved into our new building and all of the engineers are no longer sitting in the same open room with our backs to each other the need for a better way to communicate has presented itself to us. So again I ask myself…Is it really worth it, even in a 4 person engineering department?

The answer is a resounding YES! The ability to communicate design changes, control revisions, roll back designs to previous revisions and provide a better audit trail are just a few of the reasons why this has become necessary for our company to investigate. I am not saying that we are going to jump in with both feet into the PDMWorks Enterprise package, but I think that PDMWorks Workgroup will be a start for us in the process of making our workflow among our designers smoother than it is right now. The benefits of a program like this are immense when you begin to look at it closely. I want to go over a couple of the big “selling points” for me personally on having a PDM program such as this.

DESIGN COMMUNICATION

How many times have all of us opened a design that we did originally and things were changed but you have no idea what was changed or what was affected because of it. This happens a lot in a multi user environment I believe. With a PDM solution such as Workgroup or Enterprise you can now let the other designers know what you changed, when you did it and why. A tool like this would eliminate your searching through the design, then searching for the other designer who changed it the design and then waiting for him or her to remember what they did 1 month ago or longer. Wouldn’t it be easier to just have a screen that pops up and tells you the information that you need? This is not only a time saving feature but a feature that will improve your daily design and updating process’s.

REVISION CONTROL

Have any of you opened a file that you made and notice a change right away that you didn’t make but the revision is the same as was in the previously? I have and it is very frustrating because how do you know what version you are supposed to be using and if it is part you manufacture it can quickly turn into a headache for the rest of the company to try and determine which part is to which print or model. In our case it can be a costly problem because of how we interact with our CNC machinists who are basing all of their programming off of our models. The PDM products that SolidWorks offers, and I am guessing the other PDM software’s that are out there, will allow you to automatically roll revisions when you make a design change.

DESIGN ROLLBACK

Who has ever made a design change and after the first run with the new design has determined that the original design was still better? So now what do you do? Remodel it back to the original design? Do you try to re-associate an archive of that file back into the assembly it belongs to? There are probably hundreds of different ways that companies handle design changes and how they currently keep previous designs (if they do). This is another nice aspect of SolidWorks PDM solutions. It will automatically do this for you. No more trying to figure out how you did it the last time, where you saved the archived model, how you named it, etc. etc. etc. This is a very nice feature, especially when you have multiple people working on the same project and you run into the times when you would really like to see what the last design looks like.

BETTER AUDIT TRAIL

I am not going to touch on this one too much because I think that the title speaks for itself: Better Audit Trail. We are currently in the process of getting TS16949 certified after achieving our ISO 9001 2000 certification. As anyone knows that has ever been a part of such a process you will appreciate as much help as you can get for when you get audited.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion I am really looking forward to sitting down with this some more and setting it up at our company (when I get time). I am planning on attending some of the breakout sessions at SolidWorks WORLD in February that deal with these solutions. The more information the better is the way that I look at it. If you do not currently use a PDM program I highly suggest that you look into this as well. PDMWorks Workgroup comes with the SolidWorks Professional license and higher so you may already have it and just need to set it up like myself.

I want to thank Devon Sowell, Brian McElyea, Josh Mings and Ben Eadie for discussing this with me at the SolidWorks 2009 Press Launch Event. They are the ones that really got me thinking about it and I appreciate it. Be sure to check out all of their blogs and see what they have to say about SolidWorks and its partner and add on products.